EDA #25 & 26: Interference

Interference: Book One & Interference: Book Two by Lawrence Miles

In Brief: Wibbly-wobbly. Timey-Wimey.  The past, the present, the future.  Not necessarily in that order. Sarah Jane & K9 appear. Fitz does, and then doesn't. Sam leaves. History is changed, except that it isn't.

Sorry, I realise this entry is probably all over the place but I don't have the energy to go in and do an edit, this is all very stream of consciousness.

Interference is a big (2 books worth!) bold (it decides to just re-write a large part of the series' history) and complicated (makes the 2011 series look positively linear) mess of a novel. It's brimming with some great ideas, wonderful writing and an unfortunate problem of not really having a story to tell. As with a certain current producer of the show Lawrence Miles is very good at being very clever, but makes putting little things like character and story.

It's not to say that I didn't enjoy Interference, because I did. It's easily in the top 5 Eighth Doctor books that I've read so far (admittedly not a difficult challenge) and has a verve and willingness to push the range in a new direction.  As noted with many of the past 25 books there's been a real problem of most authors sticking to a fairly narrow status-quo when it comes to Who during this period.  So having an example of some experimentation is welcome.

Of course the problem is that what was a shake-up for Doctor Who in 1999/2000 is today meaningless, as we have a series which has been back on TV for 8 years now and has almost completely discarded the output of the novel range, particularly the Eighth Doctor books. So having a plot-thread which involves multiple-doctors and the effect of future actions impacting the past isn't novel or really very interesting anymore. It really just reinforced what a blind-alley this range of books were, and that they really served no purpose other than bringing in a bit of annuity revenue to the BBC. Any quality to the range's output is purely by accident rather than design.

So what do we have here? Well Interference does feel like the range is finally trying to correct some of its mistakes, in particular in adding some overarching plot-threads and finally disposing with Sam. Sam's departure is surprisingly low-key, after years travelling she has simply decided to return to Earth basically at the same point she left in 1996. It's an appropriately non-descript ending for such a stultifying character. It was obvious early on that none of the range's authors could *really* get her to work, despite a few faint glimmers. So ditching her is long overdue.

In her place joining The Doctor and Fitz is a rather strange character named Compassion, who is a member of the race known as The Remote who are at the heart of events in the book (trying to sell futuristic arms to the UN in order to disrupt the timelines and get the attention of the Time Lords for a reason which I've sort of forgotten). Not quite sure what to make of her yet as she was fairly minor in the book.

As for the arc I'd mentioned it involves more of Faction Paradox, which is an off-shoot of the Time Lords who revel in creating temporal paradoxes and are reacting due to a future Time War which is mentioned a few times (no, not *that* Time War). Unfortunately I have a suspicion that much like other books which had some good ideas very little will actually be done with most that are put into play here.

What else to talk about? Hmm, the Eighth Doctor is actually not really in the book much since he spends most of both novels being tortured in North America. Both books end with a large section with the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane on the planet Dust which ends with a change to set continuity (the Doctor regenerates here into the 4th and unknowingly becomes an agent of the Faction).

Sarah Jane and K9 are in the book too, although having her meet The Doctor again here is a very different experience to what we saw in "School Reunion". With the book being very "for the fans" there's little emotional heft to the meeting, but this just wasn't something that Doctor Who did at the time. This is The Doctor meeting his previous companion who has her own life, not the slightly soap-opera rekindling of past longing we saw on TV. For some I'm sure this is preferable, but is a good demonstration of the evolution that has happened to the show from these books into the new series.

I realised I've been a bit all over the place talking about this book. That really has to do with the fact that Interference is itself rather scattered. It's still very good, but after all of the flurry of ideas and events is said and done there's actually surprisingly little to talk about. It's one author's attempt to shake up a somewhat stagnant range of books but little else. Still, definitely one of the better entries in the series.

EDA #24 Autumn Mist

Autumn Mist by David A. McIntee

In Brief: The Doctor, Fitz and Sam land in WW2 and encounter Nazis, Fairies and Rifts.


After a bit of a break I've jumped back on the 8DA band-wagon, I think the part of me that needs completeness ensured that sooner or later I'd start up with the books again.  However I was a little concerned coming into Autumn Mist since I'd found the author's entries in the New Adventures to be some of the more *ahem* challenging entries in that series (First Frontier in particular took me ages to get through).  While McIntee is very good at his historical research and detailed descriptions his characterization and plotting had been poor in the past, making for some of the least enjoyable of the New Adventures.

With these low expectations in mind I approached Autumn Mist with some trepidation.  After having taken less time to get through the book than expected I have to say that over all the novel is surprisingly...average.  It wasn't horrible and had a couple of actual good parts, but overall it was just very unmemorable and rather dull.  Other than the regulars no other characters really stood out so long passages involving one bland soldier talking to another bland soldier were a bit rough.  And while his descriptions of various tanks and hardware is good there's very little in terms of how anyone physically appears.  It leads to the normal problem I've had with his writing that everyone sort of blurs together and figuring out who is doing what is extremely difficult.

The plot itself is rather slight, with the actual story not really starting until well after the half-way point.  Normally I can cope with padding (this *is* Doctor Who after all) if it's at least *interesting* padding, but here we have too many chapters of The Doctor, Fitz and Sam being separated and joining up with various groups of Germans, Americans and English soldiers and various battles with the main mystery being the disappearance of bodies. 

However I did appreciate the half-way mark of the book ending with Sam being fatally shot.

The resolution to her injuries (*spoiler* she doesn't die) has the novel shift away from the dreary first half into a somewhat whimsical tale of fairies from another dimension (who do you think has been taking the bodies?).  Or perhaps it just gets silly.  It turns out that the fairies have been stealing bodies to up their numbers since a large rift in space/time (are there any other kind?) has been damaging their dimension.  While I wouldn't call the "Evil fairies vs. good fairies" sections particularly good at least there's more incident rather than the aimless wandering, being captured/escaping interspersed with descriptions of firearms.

Unfortunately the ending is very poor as The Doctor seals the rift through a technobabble method involving an air-craft character and the main baddy reveals that his big reason behind everything was...that he didn't have much else to do.  All after a big battle-scene that turns out to be almost completely pointless. 

But overall Autumn Mist isn't horrible, just not very good.  And like much of the 8DA series I'm already forgetting it every happened...

EDA #23 Unnatural History

Unnatural History by Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman

In Brief: The Doctor and Sam's pasts are becoming unstuck due to a scar in space-time. To fix the scar, located in San Francisco, may mean sacrificing the Tardis as well as dealing with misplaced unicorns, hungry Krakens and an Unnaturalist who cannot abide anything which doesn't make sense (particularly The Doctor's entire life).

Unnatural History, despite being one of the better entries in the 8DA, took me a long time to get through. Looking back it seems I finished the last novel in late April, so it's been 2-1/2 months to get through 250 pages. There are a few reasons for this such as my pre-bed "reading time" is now filled with working through episode of "Dark Shadows" but mainly my interest in the series has severely waned since moving from the 7th to 8th-Doctor books. I've mentioned before that there's a palpable sense of these books being a step backwards, and while there are some good entries (and Unnatural Historyis one of them) it's just a bit depressing working through a range which has little ambition beyond just pushing out a book every month. They for the most part remind me of those terrible Star Trek tie-in books which are forced to tread water for the most part so as to not counter anything happening on the TV-show. Unfortunately here there's no actual show so the limited scope of the books is all the more annoying.

But enough about the range, as mentioned the book itself is actually very good. Kate Orman just doesn't put out a novel which is any less than very good, her 8DA entries may actually be stronger than those in the NAs strangely enough. She (and husband Jon) really seem to "get" the possibilities of the more active Paul McGann version of The Doctor. The Doctor here is much closer to the manic 10th & 11th versions in being a whirlwind of energy but managing to turn deadly serious in a heart(s)-beat. This improvement in characterization is central to the book itself working, since the plot hinges on The Doctor's past and how it all stacks up or rather doesn't. The centre of the plot hinges on the events of the TV Movie and how the almost destruction of the Tardis (and the world) at the time left a scar in space-time with strands of The Doctor's "biodata" strewn throughout San Francisco. The scar is also attracting beasts from all over the universe and beyond. 

Orman & Blum are some of the few writers who can manage to make the character of Sam work, although by essentially "removing" her the story by having her come in contact with the scar and being replaced with a version who never met The Doctor. However I have to suspect that "Dark Sam" (due to her black hair) is the authors' piss-take of the regular character by having her be far more interesting and well-developed. Here is a Sam who has a dead-end job, a history of drug abuse, is cut off from her parents and generally with little ambition in life. This "less perfect" version of the character really highlights how the original had hobbled the series. Gone is the irritating Right-on! girl of the late-90s and instead we have your average person who works in a shop (now why does that seem familiar?) coming in contact with the world of Doctor Who. Sam is just far too generic and without an actress involved to give a sense of reality (or push the character as written into a new direction) to her the result has so far not worked.

Of course even sometimes having an actress involved doesn't help as evidenced this year by the walking cardboard that is Clara.

The other bit theme of the book is around the continuity of The Doctor and how there's no way to actually correlate the character's history. The point that Blum & Orman make is that it doesn't end up being the past which is important but rather who someone is in the present. Being a series about time-travel it makes sense that the past can change, despite the potential paradox. Post-2005 this is covered over with a handy "Time War" but back in 1999 such matters were still huge within the realms of Internet newsgroups. And the response here, as The Doctor faces an Unnaturalist who wants to only have one history for the character, is a big "Who cares?". Do we need the history of the show to make sense? Of course we don't, nor should it.

Of course many out there disagree, particularly those who insist the show will end after the 13th-Doctor because of what one story made in 1976 said.

So overall Unnatural History was a surprisingly good entry in a series which it seems is finally on an upswing. If there's a fault it's that perhaps the story was a tad too meandering, which sort of kept me from finishing it for a while. The threat of a Kraken destroying San Francisco felt a bit tacked on, since every other challenge was on a more personal level. But still, I think I'll make more of an effort to work through the series again, especially since I know there's a big shake-up to the regulars coming in just another couple of books...

EDA #22 Dominion

Dominion by Nick Walters

In Brief: The Tardis encounters a wormhole and Sam is thrown into a pocket universe known as The Dominion. Meanwhile Fitz and The Doctor get involved in shady goings-on in late-90s Sweden, which is being over-run by impossible creatures.

I'm still struggling with why I'm reading these books. The 8DA are nowhere near as fun as working through the New Adventures had been, although the strange thing is that it's the quality hasn't varied nearly as much. There were some really awful NAs, and overall possibly more of them than in the later series. However the general setting since we got into the Paul McGann version of The Doctor has been "bland". It's just somewhat sad reading these books since Doctor Who seems held in stasis, nobody in 1999 sure of the right way to go forward. I've been regularly reading the excellent blog The Tardis Eruditorum which has taken on the impressive task of analyzing the overall story of the show as it exists in popular culture. The last few months has been going over highlights of "The Wilderness Years", where the show was off-air from 1990 to 2004. The blog's author has put into words much better than I ever could the feeling towards these books, but basically it comes down to the sense that there were a lot of authors wanting to do their take on Doctor Who, but no one ensuring that there was an overall thrust to the series.

The result is the sense that the overall narrative hasn't been going forward, just standing in place not wanting to change too much.

At least the good decision to bring in an alternative to Sam was taken, as the character of Fitz has given the authors a better anchor for the books. It's similar to how Benny worked better than Ace in the New Adventures.

But to the book itself. It actually wasn't bad, having a good mystery and set of memorable characters. New to the series author Nick Walters makes the smart decision to sideline Sam for most of the book and develop The Doctor and Fitz, so that their relationship has a chance to cement properly. Walters is also good at capturing a good feel for his settings, so that the sparseness of Sweden if nicely contrasted to the wonders of the pocket-universe Dominion.

However the book in being from the late-90s has a *very* noticeable X-Files feel to it with secretive government organisations being the main source of problems facing The Doctor & Co. Even UNIT is not the friendly team it once was, with it all having a slight Torchwood vibe.

Overall the book is a decent if somewhat morose romp, although again one which doesn't seem to in any way really add to the series. I guess I should be happy though that thankfully the quality of the books has greatly increased, considering how awful the beginning of the run was. Dominion ranks as being bordering on very good, which I think is enough to keep me going for now. 

EDA #21 Revolution Man

Revolution Man by Paul Leonard

In Brief: A space drug gives hippies superpowers and they almost destroy the world.

Revolution Man was alright but had the problem of giving away its central mystery (the source of the super-powers) too early in the book. So without any sort of mystery everything just sort of meandered along through the late-60s until the story just sort of stops after the main antagonist (a rock-star/cult-leader) is shot and killed by The Doctor. 

While this ending sounds rather shocking the problem is that there's just no build-up to it. Also, the Eighth Doctor books are all so self-contained that there's no sense that anything that happens will have an impact on the rest of the range. The Doctor will still be a somewhat ditzy adventurer, Sam will still be an arrogant whiner and Fitz will still be the bumbling fool. 

I'm also not sure what Paul Leonard was trying to say in the book. He's definitely anti-anarchy since the book is very critical of the peace/love movement of the 60s, but does that mean that the best way for humanity is to adhere to the status quo? It's all rather muddled. Thankfully at least his prose is decent.

That's pretty much all I have to say about Revolution Man, as with most of the series I've already pretty much forgotten about it.

EDA #20 Demontage

Demontage by Justin Richards

In Brief: Space Casino! Empires on the verge of war! Killer Painting Monsters!

Demontage is a slow meander of a book. The fist half or so is relatively plotless and aimless as The Doctor, Sam and Fitz wander around a giant space casino that's located between Human and Canvine (think big dog-men) IN SPACE! A load of somewhat forgettable characters are introduced but little seems to happen.

I suspect that Richards was trying his hand at a little bit of "world-building" but without much success since his "world" just isn't very interesting. He's a decent enough writer, his New Adventure Theatre of War was fairly good (his 8DA Option Lock not so much) but here he just can't manage to rise above competent. The second half of the book, where "stuff happens" is definitely stronger. He's good at building up a plot and characters so that (almost) everything and everybody serves a purpose by the end of the book. But it's not enough to raise the novel to more than "not awful".

Overall Demontage sits with the majority of the 8th-Doctor stories in being competent but highly unmemorable. Sam at least isn't too annoying and "right-on 90s!" (I think most authors are just writing her as Generic Companion #2 by this stage, with a lot of books removing her from the action much of the time). However Fitz is showing promise. It's obvious that Richards is much more comfortable writing for a less "perfect" companion, who gets things wrong and is somewhat on the back-foot in facing events. I suspect one of the great unsolved mysteries of Who-dom will remain the decision of BBC Books to lumber the early 8DA with such a boring character as Sam, which when combined with the "less-complex" 8th-Doctor led to the dullest series' leads in any medium.

But back to book. It thankfully ends better than it begins, with a plot by some nefarious art-dealers to kill the president using animated painting-monsters thwarted.

FYI a flame-thrower is particularly effecting against painting-monsters.

However again we've got an entry in the series that does nothing more than simply exist. It doesn't push any boundaries, try anything new or develop the regular characters whatsoever. It's frustrating that 20 books into the Eighth Doctor Adventures there's been absolutely no development. I can't think of another similar period of time (almost 2 years) where the series stayed so still.

No wonder I'm bored.

EDA #19 The Taint

The Taint by Michael Collier

In Brief: It's 1963, The Doctor and Sam encounter a research facility helping people who seem to be tainted by mysterious dark forces.

They also meet Fitz Kreiner, a somewhat aimless shop-assistant who joins the Tardis crew.

Yes, I'm still working through these books, although at a somewhat slower pace. The combination of busier lifestyle and lessened quality of the BBC output has meant that my verve in getting through the books (which previously had been around 3-4 per month) has now been reduced to 2 a month at best. Extrapolating from that rate means it could well be another 3 years before I finally get to the end of the range. That is very long time to get through a series where each book is somewhere between 200-250 pages.

Ok, but what about The Taint? It was ok. I enjoyed the "London in the recent past" setting as a Earth-based adventures have been somewhat rare in the BBC novels. For some reason authors in the late 1990s seemed to think that Doctor Who worked better in far off space rather than in a more recognizable setting.

Also good is the introduction of Fitz, who adds his self-depreciating tone to the Tardis lineup. He's instantly more relatable than walking-cliche Sam, and hopefully future authors will use him in a positive fashion.

Collier has definitely improved his writing ability since his earlier (deadly dull) Longest Day. However he still needs some improvement in his plotting, as the story tends to badly meander.

So really I'm praising the first third of the book or so, when it feels like the book is heading somewhere. While the initial "what is up with these people and their powers?" mystery is good it takes too long for anything to really start to happen. And as it turns out that the cause is due to a malfunctioning android it's a major anti-climax.

Other than the regulars and Fitz the rest of the characters in The Taint are rather unmemorable and dull. However that seems to be part and parcel for the BBC Books range.

Ok, if you couldn't tell I'm having difficulty saying much more. Finding something to say about this severe low-point in the history of Doctor Who is extremely difficult. Most of the novels just want to maintain a status-quo that isn't working. I'm now almost 2 years into the publication history of these books and there's still been no real improvement or signs of consistency. It just feels like as long as any author can hit the page-count they'd end up being published.

I want to think that I can make it to the end of the series, but I'm starting to think there are better things I should be doing with my time.